Okay, get out your schedules. It's time to pencil in the
most important "appointments" you MUST attend as a small
business owner.

I'm sure you've heard over and over that as a small business
owner, most of your time should be spent on marketing. And
while this is true, pinning down the specifics can be a
daunting task. Unless you have a regular routine you can
follow, your efforts will yield inconsistent results at
best.

So how do the most successful marketers keep up with the
constant chore of promotion? They follow a regular schedule
and attend their own "marketing maintenance appointments!"

Based on my own promotion, I've worked up a mock schedule
for you. This stuff really works for me, and may work for
you too. Naturally I don't expect you to follow it to the
letter, but this should help you develop your own "online
marketing maintenance plan."

Here we go...

Daily:

- Answer email.

If this is not already your number one priority online, it
should be. People expect answers quickly in cyberspace. If
you show them that you are ready and willing to help, you'll
earn their trust and their business.

- Perform one marketing-related task.

Even if it is fifteen minutes to register at a search engine
or post to a bulletin board, make a commitment to perform
at least one marketing-related task per day.

Weekly:

- Add a page to your website.

Even if it is a short report about your area of expertise,
adding pages regularly will increase your exposure by giving
your site more points of entry. This will also show
customers that your site is not stagnant.

- Add a dozen or so search terms to your goto.com account.
You DO have a "goto" account don't you? www.GoTo.com lets you
buy targeted clicks to your site for as little as a penny.
This marketing strategy is gaining popularity rapidly among
many prominent marketers. One of our private site members has
utilized this strategy and added 15,000+ visitors by spending
$150 a month. He never pays more than $0.01 for any click!
Enough said.

Monthly:

- Submit any new web pages you've added to at least 5 new search engines.

Once you're in the major engines like AltaVista, InfoSeek
and Excite, go for the "next level" engines like
Thunderstone, MetaCrawler, LookSmart. These engines are
included in searches from multi-engine search sites such as
dogpile.com and others. Your site needs to be listed with as
many search engines as possible.

- Find one new ezine to advertise in.

Advertising in most ezines is still one of the biggest
bargains on the internet. In many cases your cost of
advertising is recouped with just one or two sales. A few
ezines I've advertised in with excellent results are DEMC
<http://www.demc.com> and Web Marketing Today
<http://www.wilsonweb.com>. If you have not tried ezine
advertising you may be surprised at the results. Each time
you find one that works, just add them to your regular
advertising schedule and before long you'll see a steady
incline in profits. (Why not start with the one you're
reading right now - if YOU are reading it, your target
audience may be reading it too!)

- Submit an article to a list of targeted ezine publishers.

Here's how effective this can be. Just last month I released
a tip I wrote for my BizWeb E-Gazette. The following week
it appeared at internetday.com and generated over 2000
visitors to my site. Talk about effective promotion. Article
submissions need to be on your schedule.

Quarterly:

- Set up one completely automated marketing tool.

What is an automated marketing tool? Something you
implement, which promotes your site 24 hours a day and does
100% of the work. (Isn't the web a great place to do
business!) Here's an excellent example of how to use this
strategy... http://www.letemknow.com/ - This site sets up a
referral form for you to post on your site. Your visitors
can then refer their friends and associates to your site
with a few clicks. letemknow.com builds the forms for you
in seconds and it'll take you just a few minutes have the
referral service on your site. Unlike many similar services,
this one isn't interested in grabbing your traffic. It
simply helps you generate countless referrals to your site.

- Sign on one joint-venture.

Joint ventures work great on the internet. There are two
ways you can utilize this to add profits. First, you can
contact webmasters who market similar products and services
and ask them if they would be interested in offering yours.
Give them 25% - 50% of the profits and it's a win-win
situation. Another way to use this strategy is to promote
another webmasters' product or service (something you can
get behind) to your subscribers or customers. No matter
which method you choose, doing this quarterly can double
your yearly income. If you haven't tried it yet, start by
keeping a notebook of possible joint venture candidates and
contact them on schedule.

There you have it. A real marketing maintenance schedule
that works. If you don't already have your own schedule, I
invite you to print this one out and use it as your own. As
you find new marketing resources that work, add them in
and remember, always keep your appointments!

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